Atrial fibrillation is a very common arrhythmia which accounts for a substantial amount of morbidity, mortality and costs. Specifically it can lead to death, stroke, transient ischemic attack, syncope, congestive heart failure, myocardial ischemia, myocardial infarction, palpitations, malignant arrhythmia, and altered mental status. Treatment options have traditionally consisted of anticoagulation, heart rate control and heart rhythm control. Significant morbidity and mortality also results from treatment. Anticoagulation can lead to hemorrhagic stroke and bleeding. Anticoagulation with coumadin can be very labor intensive, resource demanding, inconvenient secondary to the need for frequent International Normalized Ratio (INR) checks and very susceptible to drug interaction leading to over or under anticoagulation and their respective sequlea of bleeding and stroke. Heart rate control commonly leads to drug side effects from beta blockers, calcium channel blockers and dioxin. Potentially ensuing bradyarrythmia may require a permanent pacemaker. Antiarrythmic medication can cause sudden death, malignant arrhythmia and multiple toxicities such as liver, thyroid, lens and pulmonary toxicity with amiodarone and lupus like syndrome with procainamide. Costs and polypharmacy are additional burdens of medical management of atrial fibrillation. Mechanical and chemical cardioversions can be risky and require additional procedures with their own inherent risks such as trans-esophageal echocardiography with conscience sedation and/or anesthesia.
Recently atrial fibrillation ablation procedures have introduced a long sought after permanent solution to the common and cumbersome management issues associated with atrial fibrillation. However, the nascent developments of atrial fibrillation ablation procedures have met their own obstacles. Namely, low success rates, applicability to low risk patient populations, risk of cardiovascular trauma and risk of early of latent pulmonary vein fibrosis and thus stenosis. Certainly much room exists to improve upon the safety, efficacy and inclusion of higher risk patient populations in regards to existing atrial fibrillation ablation catheter based systems.
There is therefore a need in the art for a more effective and safer method of wire positioning and tissue ablation of the left atrium. The various aspects of the embodiments of the present invention overcome and/or mitigate the aforementioned problems.